by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Saturday Night Live finds itself in an interesting situation as it approaches its 50th anniversary. On one hand, it is doing quite well and has more cultural significance than ever for a legacy TV show. A whole new generation of people have discovered the show and there’s every reason to believe it is set for another 50 years of comedic success.
And then there’s the issue of Lorne Michaels telling everyone he wants to leave the show after its 50th anniversary in a few years.
It’s my impression that this is some chatter among the higher ups at NBCUniversal that they want to end the show once and for all for this or that reason. And I’ve reached the age where I know that SNL could very well end and in a few years a lot of young people would discover it and ask, “Whatever happened to that show? It seemed like a lot of fun.”
This is all very speculative and highly unlikely to happen. What’s more likely to happen is there will be a lot of talk about the show ending, but in the end, someone like Seth Meyers will take over some of Michaels’ role while a number of other elements are handed off to SNL stalwarts.
That would be the logical thing to do. But there have been plenty of other really long-running shows that ended and they’re barely a memory now. But I would be flabbergasted if even the harshest critics of the show at NBCUniversal would do something so draconian as to just cancel it.
But, who knows. Only time will tell.
